A World That Seems Lagging Behind

The abandoned, dilapidated ranch was littered with incomplete corpses and rotting flesh. Occasionally, heads with decaying meat would click their jaws together, only to be shot and explode by a Black Gun, plunging the area back into silent death.

Zheng Yichen sat on a tombstone, worn smooth and illegible, more like a rock than a marker. He looked down at the video recording on his phone, a recording of an Anomaly disappearing. Anomalies, while sometimes appearing dangerous, were often like Mirages.

It wasn't that seeing a terrifying, colossal figure or object within an Anomaly meant one would face such a being upon encountering it.

This was common knowledge taught by Longcheng Television.

Residents of Longcheng who saw Anomalies with churning seas of clouds and rampaging behemoths didn't need to worry. It was merely an unusual phenomenon. The actual entity connected to that phenomenon might be of a completely different scale.

A person might be 1.5 meters tall or 2.5 meters tall, and others wouldn't find it strange. But when using certain projectors, people within a certain range could operate devices that appeared to be fifteen or twenty-five meters away.

In a backward ancient era, such a sight could terrify a large crowd.

Anomalies were similar.

Because of these abnormal visual distortions, it was difficult to see the specific situation on the other side when encountering an Anomaly. This information was provided by Hunter Arno.

Now, in the scene Zheng Yichen had filmed of an Anomaly disappearing, in the last few seconds before it vanished completely, the distortion was gone. Through the mist, a forest could be vaguely seen... it should be the Southern Forest he was in before.

Unfortunately, this recording was taken from the other side of the Anomaly in Longcheng, another world. The price was that there was no way back.

Zheng Yichen pondered. The money he had brought was almost spent, and the place he was staying was rented. Although he hadn't brought his car, he didn't seem to have any other regrets.

"Let's figure out the situation here first." Zheng Yichen noted down the location of this abandoned cemetery. He would come back often if he had time. What if a new Anomaly appeared here again?

He wasn't overly worried about losing things.

As he left the cemetery, Zheng Yichen discovered he was being targeted by a new vengeful spirit. In the Southern Forest, he could only detect such things when they approached and affected the temperature.

But in this other world, he felt a faint sense of being watched by a vengeful spirit. The spirit had set its sights on Zheng Yichen, and Zheng Yichen had also discovered it. The discovered vengeful spirit flew out from its hiding place, hovering about ten meters in the air, tailing Zheng Yichen without concealment.

It took advantage of its aerial superiority to do as it pleased.

This thing was different from the ones he encountered in the Southern Forest. The vengeful spirits in the Southern Forest were more violent and chaotic. This one, however, seemed to be controlled by something.

It immediately made Zheng Yichen think of beings like necromancers.

He tried to find the hidden 'necromancer' but failed. After completely leaving the abandoned cemetery and as the sun appeared, the vengeful spirit finally disappeared. It was unclear if it had been recalled or if it had hidden somewhere else.

Zheng Yichen no longer cared about that thing. The key was that he had found a path. It wasn't a paved road, but a dirt path. But it was still a path. He could see tire tracks and hoof prints on it.

"...As expected, a world with relatively backward development?" After confirming the general situation from these traces, Zheng Yichen felt a bit disappointed.

He adjusted his backpack. It contained quite a few resources: emergency medicine, food, water purification tablets, spare batteries, a solar charger, and a hand-crank charger, among other things.

Ignoring the emergency food and similar resources, Zheng Yichen considered the solar panel and hand-crank charger to be more important. The former wasn't too difficult to obtain, and he couldn't expect to craft electronic devices himself.

He had brought a lot of ammunition, but that was also a consumable. Once used, it wouldn't be easy to replenish. For places where he needed to use his gun, it was best to save the shell casings and see if he could find a blacksmith in this world to reload them.

As for the small grenades for the hand cannon, there was no point in thinking about them; they were definitely items that were used up one by one. The shotgun shells were also not like pistol bullets.

After taking stock of what he had and making a preliminary plan in his mind, Zheng Yichen tossed out a coin to decide the direction of his path. It didn't matter which way he went, as long as he could find someone.

"You rarely drink like this." At the Night Banquet Bar, the bartender placed a glass of water in front of the woman.

An Qi glanced at the glass of water but didn't touch it. "I'm a bit annoyed. A group of rookies with little ability discovered an anomaly and actually wanted to explore it alone. They didn't report it in time and were wiped out."

Listening to An Qi's words, the bartender's expression remained unchanged, and he didn't comment further on the matter. He rarely dealt with hunter-related affairs, and what An Qi was talking about had nothing to do with him. He certainly wouldn't take this opportunity to recommend some newcomers to An Qi.

As for An Qi drinking her sorrows away, she was genuinely depressed. The high-quality newcomers An Qi wanted weren't just strong fighters or hunters who possessed anomalies or were Aberrants.

The kind of newcomers she wanted were hunters with adaptability, and it was hard to find even one out of ten such hunters. Losing a whole team at once was bound to upset her.

"Perhaps they encountered an unexpected situation they couldn't handle. Would you like more alcohol?"

"..." Seeing that the bartender didn't pick up the conversation, An Qi drank the glass of water in one gulp. "No more."

She had to go deal with the aftermath. Although those hunters were wiped out for not reporting in time, they were still her subordinates. If she didn't handle it properly, it would make her other subordinates uneasy.

The hunter teams she assembled mainly focused on exploring anomalies. The fact that anomalies were connected to other worlds was a secret to many, but it was no secret to the major families and influential figures in Longcheng.

The beings on the other side of the anomalies would invade their side, and from another perspective, their side would also 'invade' the other side.

However, the duration of an anomaly was limited, and this kind of invasion was more accurately described as 'plunder.' After entering an anomaly and determining the situation behind it, and whether suitable living targets could be found nearby quickly, a series of subsequent actions would follow.

The maintenance of anomalies was limited. Longcheng had been studying anomalies for a long time. While they couldn't be 100% accurate in judging the lifespan of an anomaly, they could reduce the error margin to within half an hour.

After determining the general situation on the other side of the anomaly, this determination included not only an investigation of the surrounding environment but also the factor of 'environmental adjustment.' The former determined whether suitable targets could be found within a limited time, while the latter determined whether one or several worlds on the other side of the anomaly had value for further action.

Once there was mobilization value, her anomaly hunters would act swiftly, always managing to obtain something special.